Statement 1: Budget Overview (Continued)
Budget priorities
The 2012‑13 Budget spreads the benefits of the mining boom to help families on low and middle incomes with the cost of living and provide much needed help to small business, while still returning the budget to surplus as is appropriate given domestic and global economic conditions.
Support to families on low and middle incomes is being provided through measures including increases to family payments, more timely and accessible education payments, and a new Supplementary Allowance for eligible income support recipients.
This Budget also supports businesses to meet the challenges and opportunities of the mining boom through a loss carry‑back reform which builds on the instant asset write‑off due to start on 1 July 2012.
This Budget further converts Australia's economic success and the opportunities of the mining boom into tangible benefits for more Australians through:
- commits to the first stage of a National Disability Insurance Scheme to ensure Australians with significant and permanent disability in launch locations receive a reasonable and necessary level of ongoing care and support;
- building an aged care system for the future — more supply, higher quality of care, enhanced access, more responsive to the needs of older Australians, and financially sustainable over the long term; and
- delivering additional funding for dental services to help reduce public waiting lists and building the capacity of the dental workforce in the public system and in areas of need.
Other priorities in this Budget, which build on policies that support jobs, underpin front‑line services in areas like health and education, and grow the productive capacity of the economy, include:
- helping job seekers adapt to an economy in transition through reforms to the national training system and delivering the most effective employment services possible;
- continuing the transition to a clean energy future;
- ensuring the Government's $32.5 billion increase in the investment in schooling since coming to office continues to improve outcomes for students;
- providing an extra $225.1 million to assist a total of 130,000 people on income support over four years with their child care costs as they transition into the workforce;
- investing in high‑quality infrastructure projects, to expand capacity and boost productivity;
- investing around $3.4 billion over ten years to work in partnership with Aboriginal people and the Northern Territory Government to continue efforts to Close the Gap in Indigenous disadvantage; and
- ensuring the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is adequately equipped to uphold its commitments to ongoing Defence operations, and to respond to humanitarian and disaster crises both at home and in our region.
The Government has applied a targeted and responsible approach to make the $33.6 billion of savings needed to return the budget to surplus and pay for new spending. The Government's savings strategy has protected low and middle income families and safeguarded the key drivers of productivity, including the Government's investments in skills, schools, higher education and research.
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